Often you will find that the early stages of a part corresponds to the actual stock of your part. In such cases, it can be useful to make a configuration called "Before" (or "Stock" or similar) and one called "After" (or "Final" or similar). You can then suppress all the features to be cut from the Before configuration, and use that as the stock for your machining operations.

Add the configurations to your part with the appropriate features suppressed in the Before configuration.

When using HSMWorks in an assembly, you have a great deal of flexibility in defining stock, fixtures and rest material since you can use all of the SolidWorks modeling facilities to construct these as individual components in the assembly.

Normally each component is saved as a separate file. This is fine if you are using the component in multiple assemblies, but adds a bit of unnecessary work if the component is only used in a single assembly.

HSMWorks fully supports splitting the SolidWorks feature manager. This allows you to see two different views of the operation manager at the same time - one in the bottom and one in the top part of the feature manager. This feature opens up for new ways to manage operations, since you are allowed to see the top operation manager while editing an operation in the bottom (which is normally locked).

To show the top operation manager, either drag the splitter located just above the tabs, or simply click the operation manager tab:

HSMWorks 2010 R2 introduces as new way to easily create fixed planes from the current view. This feature is often convenient if you have to apply 5-axis indexed toolpath to a model and the exact tool orientation is not important when machining.

The feature is called "Create Plane From Current View" and is found in Helpers menu located in the HSMWorks main menu.

Autodesk Inventor HSM and HSMWorks are trademarks of Autodesk, Inc. SolidWorks is a registered trademark of Dassault Systemes SolidWorks Corp. Other brand and product names are trademarks of their respective owners.